I'm speaking Finnish!

Rakas ystäviä!

You get a real letter this week! Whoohoo!

Well, this week was possibly one of the fastest weeks of my entire life. Monday started out normal, but quickly changed in the evening when I got sick, threw up, and had to go home about 2 hours earlier than normal. I felt so bad for causing a lot of extra stress for Sisar Howell, because we were supposed to go to a high school in the morning to do a presentation about the Church. Luckily (or by the grace of the Lord) Sisaret Cribbs and Dixon, the Sister Training Leader and her companion, were in town to do splits with the sister companionships here in Turku. So, while I slept in on Tuesday morning, Sisar Howell and one of the other sisters did the presentation while Sisar Cribbs stayed with me. I think me getting sick was bad karma because when I first got into the country, I said I wouldn't mind getting sick if it meant getting more sleep. Well, I got my wish and wasn't one bit happy about it. I was well enough in the afternoon to go to some of our appointments, but came home early in the evening with Sisar Dixon while Sisar Howell and Cribbs went to our last appointment. 

Our splits officially started Wednesday morning, but Sisaret Cribbs and Dixon spent the night with us, and I was with Sisar Cribbs for our studies in the morning. I spent the day with her and we did some good contacting and visiting. Sisar Cribbs gave me a lot of good tips and hints to be more effective and outgoing, and I actually struck up my very own conversation with a sweet older Lutheran lady (most of the people here are Lutheran) on the bus by telling her I was American and asking if I could practice my Finnish with her. I told her why I was in Finland and talked to her for a while, taught her about the Restoration of the church and about the Book of Mormon, all in Finnish, all by myself! I gave her a Book of Mormon and our phone number too. I don't know if she'll read it, but I was so excited that I actually talked to someone without help and I really hope that I helped her change from this experience.

Thursday was back to normal with me and Sisar Howell. We had a dinner appointment in the evening with an awesome family in the ward and we brought along one of our investigators, a really sweet lady from Tanzania. We had delicious garlic chicken and taught about the Plan of Salvation. 

On Friday, we taught one of our investigators with a baptismal date. He's a young college student who was actually a former investigator, and finding him was a really cool miracle. We're doing this thing in the mission called the 12 Week Fast. There are 12 missionary districts in Finland, and each week, it's one district's turn to fast. Each companionship fasts for one day that week, and the entire mission prays for specific goals for that district. My first week in the country was our district's fasting week, and one of the things we asked everyone to pray for was that we would find one new investigator who would accept a baptismal date in the first lesson. Last minute Sunday night, we contacted a former investigator the elders in our ward had given us, and it was this young college guy. We set up an appointment, and in the first lesson, he accepted a baptismal date! Talk about the power of prayer and fasting! So far he is a really solid investigator, and is still actively searching for answers. We feel really good about him!

Saturday was a day of miracles too. We had some awkward blocks of time, so we had planned to contact some "formers" in the Varissuo area. Once we got there, though, we realized we didn't have the list of people and their addresses. But, we knew that God had a plan in this, so we said a prayer and asked Him to help us find the people He had prepared, then we went on our way. We felt like we should tract a couple floors in an apartment building, and lo and behold we found two people who wanted to learn more. One was a really sweet girl from England, and the other was a way cool guy from India, who actually came to church on Sunday. It really was a miracle that we found these people. I know the Lord is preparing people here for us to find, and he is preparing us to find them, even if it means leaving my planner at home on accident.

Sunday was good. I'm preparing a little musical number with a less active member in the ward who is an incredible guitar player. It's for the going-away party for Vanhin and Sisar Mortensen, the incredible senior couple here in Turku, who are going home next month. If angels really do walk the earth, it's the Mortensens. We spent a little time before church practicing that. We had both the college guy and the Indian guy in church, then in the evening we had a dinner appointment with the bishop and his family, and the college guy came with us. In case anyone is wondering what fantastic Finnish cuisine is like, we had tacos. Totally exotic.

We topped off the week by visiting Tuomiokirkko, the huge cathedral across the river from our apartment. It's over 700 years old and is the "mother" Lutheran church in Finland. 

So that was my week, and probably the most exciting email I've written so far. Hope you all are doing well and thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

Hyvän vikon jatkoa!

Rakkauf,

Sisar Hillebrant

Tuomiokirkko - Turku Cathedral

Inside Turku Cathedral

Sisar Cribbs and me.

Week 4 (Almost)

Rakas ystäviä!

I am now the proud owner of a Turkulainen kirjastokortti (Turku library card), so I am writing this email not from the church, but from a laptop at the library.

Fun fact! My middle name is Ruth, so that's why this is significant. Did you know that Ruth (like from the Bible) is in Christ's lineage through Joseph? So not technically related except by marriage, but I didn't know that until I started reading the New Testament again. A lot of people ask have asked if we use the Bible too, or just say we believe in it and I realized that I'm not well-versed (ha, get it?) in the Bible and decided to start reading the easier of the two books.  I'm trying to read at least a little everyday, because the Bible really is super important because it's the word of God too. It's important, especially as a missionary, to know the Book of Mormon really well, because that's what we use to do the bulk of our teaching. But, it is just as important to know the Bible because it teaches of Christ too and it teaches real, solid doctrine.  And, it's what most people are familiar with and we need to be on common ground with them.

I will tell you a little about my schedule because it pretty much never changes and pretty much determines what we do every day. We get up at 6:30 AM and exercise (or pretend to exercise) for around 30 minutes (or 20 depending on how much I don't want to do it that day. Don't worry, I do try), and then we get most of the way ready and eat breakfast. We don't usually put on makeup until later for the sake of time and not rubbing it all off during study time. Then, we have companionship prayer and start personal study for an hour. We have two hours of companionship study since I'm still in training, and an hour of language study. We usually take time for lunch right after that, finish getting ready and then we are out the door. Hopefully, we have lessons scheduled with investigators, but we also visit members, less active members, and recent converts, so usually we have a good amount of stuff to do. If worse comes to worst, we go out on the streets and contact people - meaning we just talk to as many people as we can. We also have a lot of travel time to schedule in usually, whether by bike or by bus, so that eats time as well, but what can you do? We take dinner at some point during the evening, sometimes around 5, and sometimes it depends on whether or not we have a dinner appointment. Sometimes we take dinner around 8 and then just stay in for the evening. In the Finnish culture, evenings are more commonly alone- or family-time, so it is often difficult to schedule stuff then, so it's a good time for us to take dinner in order to be most time-effective. We are home about 9, or 9:30 if we have an appointment or travel time, then we plan for the next day, have companionship prayer and get ready for bed. We're supposed to be in bed by 10:30 (I'll admit that's been the hardest thing for me because it's difficult to do everything that needs doing, but no one's perfect, right?). So that't a day in my life here in Finland.

So every missionary has funny stories, and I'm sure you've been waiting to hear a good one. Well I have one. This actually happened just within the first few days of being in country. We were in an area of Turku called Varissuo trying to find an address and there was this guy sitting out on his parvite (I'm not sure if that's correct spelling, but it's a little patio/porch/balcony thing that all the apartments have) smoking and we stopped and talked with him a little. We gave him a pass-along card with our phone number and started talking about how we believe in God as our heavenly father, and in Jesus Christ as our Savior, and the guy just went off. He said he believed in the great Creator, but that he did not believe in Christ at all, because according to him, Christ was just some guy who said all these things and just wanted all the attention for himself. We trying to explain otherwise, and that Christ was the son of God, and the guy then told us that Christ was actually conceived when a UFO came and took Mary up and made her pregnant, so Christ was actually an alien or a cyborg or something. Then he started talking about how he got visions and he had a direct connection with the Creator and that he had a never-ending flow of visions of the creation going in the back of his head and that he had seen the creation of the world and he saw our creation and he saw all these things as they were happening. So, by this point we had established that the guy was nuts, and we were like no thanks and just walked away. The next morning we got a phone call and Sisar Howell picked up. Her face went a little pale and she got this funny expression and she basically said "No, thanks, we have our own religion, but have a nice day, bye," and hung up and I just knew it was that guy. And she turned to me and said, "He just asked us to be his opetuksenlapset!" The crazy man had created his own religion and wanted us to be his disciples! And what made it funnier is that this is only the second time Sisar Howell has ever had someone call her back from a pass-along card. So I guess the moral of the story is that the cards do work, but maybe not always in the way we expect.

I hope all is well with you! Love life, love God, and love each other!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

Springtime is Coming!

Transfers here are every 9 weeks. I will be here for at least 2 transfers because the training program is 12 weeks long. So the soonest I could be transferred is right around the end of June, if my math is good.

Weather-wise, it has been absolutely stunning the last couple days. My first week and a half, we had a little snow on and off. But the last couple days, it has been bright and sunny! Spring is already coming in Turku and it is beautiful!

As far as food is concerned, we do eat with members occasionally, at least once a week so far. Last week, we had three meals at members' homes. The food isn't too different so far. I'm trying to get that lingonberry pudding recipe for you, and there's another dessert that is kind of like a giant pancake that they eat with jam and ice cream that was pretty good. I try to eat pretty well at home. I have pasta and bread and meat, some frozen vegetable because they are easier, and lots of fruit. The Finns have this thing called Rahka (I think) which is like a much thicker yogurt, and they love to mix it with fruit and sometimes whipped cream. It's actually not legal in the US because it's not, like, pasteurized or something, but it is so good.

We did see the young couple with the boy again, a couple times actually. We're trying to actually teach them, but it's hard because they've been busy moving and they're child is a crazy, but adorable little monkey and we're not sure yet how to really interest them. He had said he would come to church this Sunday but wasn't there, so I'm thinking that next week we actually need to go get him or something (on the bus, of course) because we think he really wants to come. But we've gotten to do some good service for them and they like having us around, so we're taking that as a good sign.

We visited the less-active woman again. She really like shaving us over and she likes talking to us, but just not so much usually about the church. She did let us share a spiritual thought with her out of the Book of Mormon. She is religious and she loves the Bible, but is bitter towards anything related specifically to the church, if I understand right. So we were a little concerned that she might be upset about us using the Book of Mormon, but it was fine and we had a good discussion about looking for little blessings in everyday life. She also let her daughter come to church with  a friend a couple weeks ago. That was pretty out of the blue, and we hope it will become a common occurrence. We are going back in a couple weeks to help her clean after they move, so we hope we can just keep serving and loving her back into the church.

We have so many good investigators and I have already seen so many miracles this last week. One cool experience actually happened as a bit of a chain of events. Last week, we met a young man from Nigeria and started teaching him. This past Sunday, on our way to church, we met another young man also from Nigeria and he came to church with us. We had a very good lesson with him and his roommate on Tuesday, and on the bus afterwards, we met yet another young man from Nigeria who actually knew the guy we just taught and had been invited to join in the lesson but was unable to. He became a new investigator as well. All three of these young Nigerian men live in Varrisuo, and all are at least familiar with each other. I know the Lord is preparing people to meet us and sometimes these people are even helping to prepare each other, whether or not they know it!

~I have been told on multiple occasions that my pronunciation is phenomenal, and one of the YSA girls that has come with us on lessons told me that I have some of the best pronunciation she has ever heard from a foreigner. So that's pretty encouraging.

Yes, we are going to Finland - even if we are too short to reach!

Our appartment.

Our apartment (did they shop at Ikea?)

My new bike - I am officially a missionary. 

Life is good! They have peanut butter.

Our chapel in Turku.

Pictures from my last week at the MTC.

Well, it appears I have run out of email time, due to all the photos I've been sending home. So there will not be a long email this week, but check out the pictures from my last week at the MTC.

Doing laundry.

My companions, Sisar Owen (Finland) and Feil Nover (Hungary)

Studying in our class room.

Good thing my mom taught me to sew. Became the fix-it person in our district.

Our zone at dinner time.

Second to last Sunday walk to the temple. 

Sisar Owen, Feil Nover (Sister Feil) and me.

Our district with our teacher Veli Stewart.

Packing is so exhausting!

My first companion in Finland - Sisar Howell.

Love you all!

Rakkaudella,

Sisar Hillebrant

Fantastic Finland

Sisar Hillebrant's neighborhood

Rakas ystäviä!

So traveling here was pretty much terrible.  I hate sleeping on planes, but I usually dislike being awake anymore because I feel queasy if I'm not doing anything.  We were in transit, I think, for about 40 hours and within that time I think I maybe got about 6-8 hours of very poor quality sleep.  We got into Helsinki at 11:30-ish PM. President and Sister Rawlings, who are probably two of the nicest people I've ever met, were there with some elders to pick us up and take us to the mission home, where we had warm food and interviews, a short e-mail time, and then bedtime.  I took a shower that night so I got to sleep at about 2:20 AM.  We were woken up around 8:40 in the morning and were fed a Finnish breakfast.  There was this awesome whipped lingonberry pudding and Finnish bread and some multi-grain and berry hot cereal. Some of the people from the office came and gave us a mission orientation, then we packed up and went to the Mistrati (I don't think that's spelled right) to register in the country, then to the mission office where we had lunch and a meeting with the president and the trainers.  We were assigned to our trainers, and I am with Sister Howell, and she is great!  We were driven to the train station and Sister Howell and I, as well as Sister Owen and Sister Shellenberg, were on the train to Turku, my first area!  We got in around 7:30 PM and took my things to the apartment, did a little late night grocery shopping, then went home, unpacked some and went to bed. Suffice it to say that it was a VERY long 3 days.

Sisar Hillebrant with President and Sister Rawlings.

Turku is actually the warmest city in the country. It isn't really much colder here that is was in Provo, so my coat is actually perfect right now!  It has snowed a few times since I got here, but not too heavily, and it doesn't stick around, so there isn't too much snow really anywhere.  Most of the streets are dry about half the time.  It was a blessing, I think, that I didn't buy a heavy coat in the States. And as a matter of fact, there is actually a spare coat in the apartment that was worn by Sister Howell's last companion, and before her by Sister Christofferson (one of the Finnish teachers in the MTC right now, who taught the other district)!  And, it fits perfectly! So I am going to adopt it and when next winter is over, I will leave it behind for another sister.

The first couple days in the field really haven't been horrible or scary at all, except that I have been completely exhausted all the time.  I've had to take a nap almost ever day that I've been here.  Sister Howell is so good and accommodating and understanding.  She's really been easing me into mission life.  She helps me SYL a little, but isn't forcing it either. She is going to start gradually giving me more responsibility, like being on phone duty and helping with the map and things like that, as I get more adjusted.  Talking to people freaks me out a little because the Finns just talk so fast (and the language in Turku is even harder to understand than "regular" Finnish, apparently) that it's so hard to catch what anyone says.  But, not understanding isn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Right now, when we go street contacting, I can initiate conversations, mostly just saying "HI" and asking what's up, and whatnot, then mostly just standing back and observing the conversation between the person and Sisar Howell so I can work on my understanding.  I'm trying now to start getting more involved in conversations so I can start practicing, and I was asked to bear my testimony in Sacrament meeting yesterday.  I've hear from pretty much everybody that my pronunciation is incredible and that most people I talk to can't believe I've been in the country for less than a week, so that's encouraging.  Right now my biggest focus needs to be expanding my vocabulary so that, even if my grammar isn't perfect, at least I can talk about and recognize more everyday things.

Turku Cathedral

We have met with a couple investigators and one less active member.  Our schedule has, unfortunately, been rather lax the last couple days.  I met an unmarried couple with the most adorable little boy.  The woman didn't really talk to us to much, but the man is so funny and actually pretty much just speaks English to us. We didn't really teach them, but just did some dishes and helped him sand down some bumps in the wall. We also met with a less active woman who is British and married to a Finn with two children.  She has a lot of hard feelings toward the church because of some pretty awful things that happened in her past, so it's really difficult to teach her.  But, we came over and did some service and just talked with her.  I am really surprised by the number of people we speak English to, but mostly it's because there are a ton of students here from all over the world, and English is often more comfortable for them than Finnish, so it has been a kinder transition that I thought it would be. We have met a lot of really cool people, and hopefully have some good potential investigators that we can get in touch with.  I am excited to see what happens when I start getting more involved with the people here.  It's really an amazing time to be in Finland.  The Lord is hastening His work here, and you can definitely see that He is preparing His children here.

Rakkaudella, 

Sisar Hillebrant

Finnishing What We've Started

Rakas ystäviä!

Consecration week has ended and we have 4 full days left! That doesn't include the rest of today (Wednesday). My mom also wanted me to tell you a little about how we learn the language here, so that will probably be the mass of this email. Not too much is different when you've been in the MTC for 8 weeks.

So the secret for learning Finnish is that you pray really hard. That's pretty much it. In all reality, we learn all the grammar principles one at a time in class, then are pretty much responsible for learning vocabulary on our own. Our teachers were good about baby-ing us a little more at the beginning, then made sure that we speak more and more Finnish as time went by. The process here pretty much just involves SYL: speak your language as much as possible, even if you suck at it. We started teaching lessons in Finnish on our third day in the MTC, and have been teaching almost exclusively in Finnish since we got here, so that gives us a lot of SYL experience in the gospel lessons.  Now I can talk a lot about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and the Plan of Salvation etc etc etc, and really that's the important stuff. Everything else will come with time. There is a fun little detail that will shake things up a little, though. There are basically two versions of Finnish: spoken and written. We are learning written Finnish, and spoken Finnish is pretty much a shortened version of written Finnish. So how in the world I'm going to know what people are saying is beyond me. I am hoping beyond hope for an experienced trainer. And thank heavens the Finns are so nice. Then to cap it all off, we had Consecration Week, which among other things meant we were supposed to speak only Finnish as much as possible for the entire week. I tried really hard for the first few days, but I admit I started falling through starting Sunday. I don't think we spoke a lick of Finnish on Sunday...

As for this week, not much has happened other than Consecration Week. Sisar Owen, Feil Nover and I had prepared a musical number, Consider the Lilies, and auditioned to perform in a devotional [pretty much in front of all the missionaries in the MTC]. We auditioned in front of Sister Nally, the MTC President's wife/MTC Relief Society President and her counselor Sister Roach, both of whom are two of the nicest people I've ever met. We made it onto the "yes" list, but we won't get to perform because there is a special devotional this Sunday and we leave the day after. We did get to sing in Sacrament Meeting, though, so that was cool. Speaking of the special devotional, President Holland from UVU (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's son) is coming to speak to us about Joseph Smith and it's going to be super rad. There have also been rumors floating that Elder Holland himself is going to be there because it's Sister Holland's birthday and she might come to listen to her son speak....So long story short, we are very lucky to be here on Sunday.

That's about it for now. The rest of my week will be packing and getting ready to go to Finlaaaaannddd!!! I'm so excited to get out into the real world and to serve real people in God's really true church! I love you all and I love the Lord. He is so good!

Rakaudella, 

Sisar Hillebrant

Consecration Week

Rakas ystäviä! (I think that means "friends" but there are so many ways to pluralize words so I'm not positive)

I have 12 days left in the MTC, and Consecration Week is here! That means that for the next week, we are supposed to speak nothing but Finnish to prep us for the field, and let me tell you, it ain't no picnic. Thank goodness we are all in the same boat, or it would be torture. The worst part is that we are in a zone with the Hungarians and new Albanians, so we need to translate a lot. We've been teaching some pretty good lessons, and have finally had a chance to practice teaching about the Word of Wisdom. Today we'll be teaching the Law of Chastity for the first time, so thank heavens for practice.

My mom pointed out that I am not being exceptionally detailed about life at the MTC, and she kindly provided me with a list of things to talk about, so I'm pretty much just going to answer her questions today.

Cafeteria food: There is one cafeteria, and it is huge. Meal times are staggered depending on what zone you are in, so the lines usually aren't too long. We have usually about 5 options every meal, and it's normal stuff like pasta, chicken, salad, wraps, burgers, etc.  They are really good about giving us variety, and considering how many people they feed, it's decent quality stuff and it tastes pretty good. The only problem with it is that it messes up your digestive system big time. I won't go into detail about that, but I definitely can't wait for a real home-cooked meal that doesn't make me feel bloated. We pretty much just sit together as a zone for meals. I usually try to sit with the other Finns so we can practice Finnish when we eat, and that's going to be especially important this week since we can't speak English unless absolutely necessary.

We wake up every day at 6:30. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, we have class starting at 7:45, where we learn grammar, Preach My Gospel, and teach lessons. Throughout the day, we have personal and language study, a bunch of additional study to prepare for lessons and work on whatever we want, gym, lunch, dinner, more class, and so on. On Tuesday nights, we have devotionals and a service project, where we take down chairs and the podium in the gym that we use for devotionals. Wednesday is our P-day. We go to the temple, e-mail, do laundry, and write letters, and in the evening we have class again. Friday, class starts later and we have study time in the morning.

My district in front of the temple.

Sunday is the best day of the week. We have study time, Music and the Spoken Word, Relief Society, Sacrament meeting, the Sunday walk to the temple, District meetings, a Devotional and service. Since Sisar Owen, Feil Nover, and I are Sister Training Leaders, we have Branch presidency in the morning and a leadership training meeting after Relief Society. We also have a training meeting on Tuesdays before service. At night, we are done with the day at 9:30 (usually). We are supposed to have personal devotional time at 10:15, where we do anything that brings us closer to the Lord. We are supposed to be in bed with lights out at 10:30, which honestly almost never happens just because there is so much to do before the day is over. But I am definitely way better than I was when I first got here. Probably because Feil Nover came and we had to be examples :)

Sisar Owen, Feil Nover (Sister Feil), and Me

When we hosted new missionaries last week and the week before, we met the new missionaries at the curb when they pulled up and made sure their

goodbyes didn't take too long. We helped them with their luggage and escorted them around to check in, took them to their room, then to get their study materials at the bookstore, then to the classroom. It was so much fun to see their excitement and remember what it was like for me to come. The MTC is like a whole different world! Some people jokingly call it Spirit Prison: you feel the spirit all the time, but you can't leave!

Well, I'm pretty much out of email time. This week wasn't too exciting, so I'm glad Mom gave me some things to talk about. Next week I will try to remember to talk about how they teach us the language.

I love you all and am so grateful for you prayers. Heaven knows I need as much help as I can get. The Lord is so good and so ready to bless us if we just ask Him. That's what I'll need to remember as I go into Consecration Week!

Rakaudella, 

Sisar Hillebrant

Together with some of the other sisters in our branch.

It is not all hard work.